


what we carry in, we carry out

by be_themoon



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: F/M, Sibling Incest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-01
Updated: 2016-09-01
Packaged: 2018-08-12 07:50:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,082
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7926622
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/be_themoon/pseuds/be_themoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter and Susan are Narnians.</p>
            </blockquote>





	what we carry in, we carry out

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Snacky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Snacky/gifts).



It’s late and dark in the woods, after the noise of the celebration has died down. Too early for people to be looking for her, too young in their exuberance and celebration to be thinking that their Queen is alone in the spaces that are not yet truly safe, and besides Lucy is out there dancing with them, loud and clear and present where Susan finds it easier right now to slip away and think of other things. 

 

The scent of the fresh spring is intoxicating, and she inhales it and turns to look at where Peter has come through the branches of the trees. 

 

He is taller here than he was in England, but so is she, so she holds out her hand and he takes it and she turns a little into him, just enough for some comfort as they both look out over the clearing opening up beyond them. 

 

_ It’s so big _ , she’d said, and it still is. But somehow, right now, that feels a little easier.

 

+

 

It’s not at all subtle, once it starts, the offers of alliance that hinge on Susan or Lucy marrying someone they’ve never met from a country they would hardly know if they had been born and raised in this place, rather than in the far off distance that England has become. It isn’t even offence that Peter takes at them, the quiet shut down and the way his shoulders stiffen when he stalks the hallways for the rest of the day. It’s something more, something bigger.

 

“This is what they are accustomed to,” Susan tells him one evening as they sit in the study together going over reports, her elaborate dress taken off so that she can sit comfortably in her shift and a robe. 

 

(How old are they now? How old were they when they arrived? She no longer remembers, just that the years are already moving together too quickly.)

 

“You are not a chip to be bargained away.” His voice is quiet but steady, and where she had expected anger from him there is nothing but a solid rock. 

 

She sets aside the correspondence from Calormene for the moment, something to be looked at later when she is by herself. Peter will not take it well. 

 

“I would not lose my influence were I to be in another kingdom.” 

 

He looks up, and that is the moment she sees the vulnerability in him, the sudden realization that he feels he would be losing her. The kingdom had been her focus, the ways she could help it, and now all she can see is the sense of loss in his eyes as he searches hers. 

 

“No.” 

 

It is hard to tell what that is a refusal to, so she stays where she is, gaze fixed on him, until he amends his words. 

 

“You would not. But you would no longer be a -- a Narnian queen.”

 

_ His queen _ , is what she hears between what he says, and she considers that to herself quietly before she stands and moves to his side, one hand on his shoulder as she leans to drop a kiss to his forehead. 

 

“That is true.”

 

With that she departs.

 

+

 

The Midsummer Feast is always a heady one. It might start in the banquet halls that Susan has arranged and tidied over and over again, a testament to the many times she has had to entertain those from other lands who are not used to the Narnian ways. A testament, she supposes, to her own ways still inherited from a land she hardly remembers. 

 

But the Midsummer Feast - it does not remain there. The dignitaries from elsewhere retire early, generally, unless they are one of the few willing to entertain other ideas. 

 

This time of the year celebrations spill out of doors into the wild fruitful fields of summer, the grains ripening in the field and the skies wide and so clear that the stars are like fire in the sky. There are bonfires everywhere, wine skins spilled or emptied, and there is dancing the like of which Susan has never seen before. Every year she thinks she is prepared, thinks she remembers enough from the last one, but she never truly is. 

 

She finds herself in Peter’s arms halfway through a dance in the middle of a field, spins with him wildly until they both collapse in laughter to one side. 

 

This is Narnia in summer, hot and sticky and beautiful, and there is no one to question why they remain there tangled together.

 

Perhaps they would not anyways, she thinks, and his hand on the bare skin of her arm is heated and warm even with the formal outer coverings of her gown discarded. 

 

She is not sure which of them leans forward first, who first makes the move to press what remains of their bodies together, just that it doesn’t matter which one moves first because the other one follows like the familiar chorus to a song, hands pulling closer until they are flush against each other in the hollow of a tree that is humming it’s song through the skin of its bark to the tune of the rest of the celebrations. 

 

When they pull apart she is breathing heavy, her eyes searching his for some understanding of what has just happened, if it is what she thinks it is. 

 

“No bargaining chip,” he murmurs, still close against her.

 

Her smile grows even when she does not bid it, and she is no longer certain what that means but she thinks, perhaps, it is a good thing. 

 

“I am, above all, a Narnian.” Her words are gentle, but the curve of her arm around him to pull him closer to her is not so at all. 

 

Even with the celebrations on every side of them, these woods are dark and silent, her answers hidden within them. 

 

+

 

When they return to the celebrations Peter is tall and golden, the crown gone long before they found the woods, his under tunic scuffed but his sword still hung by his side, and though for a moment she finds it strange to be before her subjects in nothing but an under gown and crown of leaves a dryad had placed on her even as they went into the dance again somehow it seems entirely right. 

  
Within moments they are swept into the still ongoing celebrations, never more than a fingertips length away as they swing and swirl through it.

**Author's Note:**

> Beta by [redacted].


End file.
